50 Licks To Go

GT132

50 Licks To Go

Getting ready for some autumn gigs? Here are a bucket-load of licks to turbo charge your chops and get you sounding authentic in loads of styles!

We all know that playing metal licks in a country standard will probably loose you the gig and sound lame to boot; this article will solve this problem by giving you authentic and cool licks in ten of the most popular styles.

We’ll identify the main clichés, the basic tone characteristics, the scale/chord choice and the most important artists for each style.

For obvious reasons it’s impossible to cover all this in depth for each style, so if you’re a new to a style (e.g. Latin or Country), take it as dipping a toe into new musical waters…

PRO TIP: When studying licks it’s important to keep in mind…

Understand what chords you can use the lick on.

Find 2/3 other places where you can play the same notes (maybe in different octaves).

Play the lick over a backing track. Improvise with it and try to incorporate it into your vocabulary (think of the analogy of learning to speak a new language. You learn a phrase and then you try to say the same thing slightly differently).

Transpose it into other keys.

Compose your own licks in that style.

Analyse then develop the central ‘idea’ of the lick.

Every time you come across a lick that you like, write it down and work on it!